Tonight’t topics: Embassy attack, thoughts on 9/11, the real economy and Tamerlane’s take on Obama’s bump. Tonight’s guest: Paul Truesdell
Join Lynne, myself and Tamerlane at 6pm pacific. All you have to do is click right here.
Thursday show preview: Anita Finlay and Annabelle are coming around to talk like they walk.
So wish I could listen tonight live! Best of luck. See you tomorrow.
Well, I was able to catch it anyway, and it is definitely one not miss. Train wreck at the end, but it was fun!
Only a train wreck in that two locomotives were in a head on collision.
Caught the last half hour. Jumped off the train….
Isn’t that a bit like saying it was only sex in that two people were bumping uglies? I mean, shit, definition and all that. It was what it was; I wanted to hear about polls, too. The entertainment was fine, but the ultimate purpose was not achieved. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. FTR, Obama’s lead in Ohio has shrunk to 3 points on RPC. That means Romney is up 4.
“Train Wreck” in any form of entertainment (this is radio after all) means bad. It most certainly was not bad. Unruly and out of the blue? Yep.
I didn’t mean to suggest it was bad, that’s true. It wasn’t bad radio, but it was definitely gawk-worthy.
What happened? Chit, I always miss the good stuff….. Did Tamer misbehave?
NES, are you coming on to me?
I affirm or deny nothing.
Yikes! Didn’t see that coming… the key question for me is: was it good radio?
I found it invigorating. John’s show and blog are rarely special because he invites all points of view. I do agree with Paul Truesdell on one point: this is the fundamental question of our time (although I’ll frame the question in my terms): are we to be a society focused on the common good, or are we a rat race that leaves the weak and unlucky behind?
First time I’ve been able to listen in a long time. ouch.
Really though, it reminded me of discussions my father’s family used to engage in.
Ah, sweet memories.
Two righteous men having a discussion is never a train wreck.
So say we all.
Tamerlane
What you were describing is Marxism. From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs. Never works.
One of the fundamental things about being American is the belief that we can go as far as our talents will allow us to go. Granted, the American dream is kind of tarnished right now, BUT, it is in our core that we can make our own way. Why else would poor people be against the death tax? It’s because they believe that someday they may be rich and they sure don’t want to be taxed. I promise you if you came to beautiful Polk County, Florida and suggested that everyone’s pay should be decided by some government agency both Paul the Painter and Robbie the Roofer would say no, if I work harder I want to be paid more. That is who we are. Women are still fighting for equal pay. Why should a man get paid more for the same job? The old school thinking was that he needed more to support his family. No, if I am working just as hard, if not harder, and producing more I want to be compensated for it. Maybe I’m selfish but if I am doing a better job I want to be recognized and rewarded for it.
1) I disagree with Marx. I advocate a social democracy, and am proud to do so;
2) It’s not news that the poor and middle class oppose estate taxes because they foster fantasies about becoming rich some day. Still, those are wild fantasies, and they are fools to oppose those taxes on unearned wealth;
3) Robbie the Roofer is busting his ass off, and contractors do all right. Lloyd Blankfein, on the other hand, is a parasite who’s never contributed one iota to society, rather has brought misery and woe upon us;
4) When I was in corporate, I worked my tail off, did outstanding work, and was compensated amply. I remember well one quarterly meeting, when one of the company’s founders handed me an achievement award in front of 3,000 fellow employees. A month later, after that founder and his two partners had frakked up royally, I was laid off with 780 others. Was I to blame for not taking “personal responsibility”? I was in my 30′s, and found another job after a while. Had that happened to me at this age, in this economy, I’d be “permanently unemployable”, and, in Paul Truesdell’s judgement, jetsam.
Tamerlane
Perhaps we have forgotten my failed bid for President as the Masterbation Party Candidate.
Aside from the obvious plank in my platform, the first thing I said I would do is tax the shit out of any “American” company who has moved their business off shore. That means you Disney. Having lived in Massachussetts you know that there are shuttered mills dotting the landscape. Except for perhaps the converted luxury lofts in Achushnet (there’s an oxymoron for ya) we can reopen them. Hey Ralph Lauren your shirts made in Thailand are going to costs $500 because of taxes but if you made them in Fall River you may have a slight bump in cost but guess what? Because you are employing Americans to make them they can now afford them. Even if the blue oxford button down cost a bit more than before wouldn’t you purchase it if it were made here? I would. Because then the person who has now joined the middle class again can purchase what I sell. Which I am proud to say is manufactured here.
I really don’t understand how Disney expects someone to pay $85 for a ticket when they are moving their call centers off shore.
My grandfather worked in the mills in New Bedford. When he describes making rayon, “I worked with deadly poison” (although he’s 102 so how deadly was it Pepere?) he said it with pride. He and my Memere (who also worked in the mills) raised seven children who all did pretty well.
That is how I would create jobs.
I still want to get paid more than my lazy co-worker though. That’s just how I roll.
The only way to re-open mfg in the US is to impose tariffs that make producing at home more cost-effective for businesses.
Perhaps your lazy co-worker is being compensated for being better than you at office politics, something the system has ‘set a value on’.
I have to log off. Everything you’re saying sounds spot on to me.
“The only way to re-open mfg in the US is to impose tariffs that make producing at home more cost-effective for businesses.”
Hell yeah! That is the biggest no brainer that no politician ever wants to touch. One of the biggest reasons manufacturing has left the US in droves is because we allowed corporations to pull their manufacturing overseas where workers would be happy to be paid a pittance and be grateful regardless of whatever shitty working conditions they had to endure.
We should be heavily tarrifing EVERYTHING that is produced overseas or manufacture those things in the US for that reason alone. Blue jeans and ipods would cost a lot more either way and ultimately people would decide how many new pairs of blue jeans and new versions of the iphone they need, but that’s how it would get fixed. I wasn’t pulling a number out of thin air a week or so ago when I said a Chinese worker makes $8 for every Ipad produced, it’s a fact.
That’s why every politician selling supply-side econimics (Reagan, Bush, Bush II, Romney) all say that they want to get rid of all the red tape (regulations) and pesky unions (empowered labor) and then the economy will start humming again. It’s a load of crap.
By the way – just read the tag line on top. I love Tracy Jordan.
“Tamerlane’s take on Obama’s bump.”
Now THAT is a promising topic! Isn’t “bump” too flattering a description for what O’s packing?
That’s what Mechelle said.
The finance wizard from Ocala is no doubt, a nice guy. But Tamer’s frustration and his hurting for his friend are very understandable. There are a limited number of people who are unlikely to find work that will keep the wolf from the door. Usually they are either convicted felons or substance abusers. But it is a pretty narrow category.. The 52 year old lady may be reluctant to look into gov’t programs that will pay to re-train her, or she may not even know about them..She probably should start with her local unemployment office or even the agency in Cali that processes food stamp applications, they generally know where she can be helped. She may not need re-training, just a shot of self confidence. I wish her well. In the past, I volunteered as a job coordinator for victims of domestic abuse, so I had to learn a lot of this stuff. Tamer, let me know if she would like to e mail me, unfortunately, all I know are the policies of NY agencies, Cali may operate differently, but I am glad to help if I can. At least I hope she knows mature women all over this land are in the same boat, but it’s not unfixable, even if the boat is a bit leaky. These days, 52 is the new 42 I think Marie Osmond said that, so it must be true, right ? In the meantime pick up “What Color Is Your Parachute”, in the latest version you can find in the local library. It has helped a lot of people.
A retraining program? You’re living in a dream world, Soph. I related the story of just ONE acquaintance — I know of many more who are struggling to make a living. That person, ftr, is college-educated, a dedicated mother & wife, really, really fucking smart & well read, and has a kick-ass degree. Hardly a felon or an addict. But she’s also gray and a little dumpy — oh, and she limps, result of a job-site injury. Not a snowball’s chance.
John’s solution is to put her on welfare, which he claims costs less than a WPA program that would employ her productively. While we can crunch the numbers on that, I say, in the equation we must also factor in the loss of dignity it would bring upon honest, hard-working people, who only want to get back to work and contribute.
Paul’s solution is to declare them “permanently unemployable” and hope they disappear. ‘Tant pis, cretin!’
I can do the poll report tomorrow, if John still wants me on his show.
Duh…of course…i want you on the show. I invite dissension pathologically. I just didn’t expect it from that angle tonight…and..well… it’s fucking hard to get guests…which is all I’ll say about that. I will email you.
Tamerlane don’t mischaracterize what I said. And what the guest said. The guest NEVER said we should “leave people by the side of the road”.
“Paul’s solution is to declare them “permanently unemployable” and hope they disappear.” This was not said. He was discussing a shift in the economy, he didn’t say people should be shoved overboard.
And my “solution” of welfare” WTF? I never said that. Recreating the actual jobs lost in this depression via the federal government is errant nonsense. Who pays for it? States can’t. Cities can’t . The feds could have done more to be sure. And criminals got away with the biggest heist in world history, thank you W and Obama. But It’s not 1932. We don’t control the world chess board. We don’t have all the oil. We don’t control an endless sea of resources anymore.(which served as collateral to our debting at the time – we COULD get out of debt and we did via employing those resources in a world war. Now? Not so much) We have to fight wars just to break even and keep the Chinese in check. And we don’t live in a society where women working is “odd”. We don’t live in a society in which 12% of the population is “kept in place” and so they will never truly compete. Every nation which has a remotely functional social welfare democracy is homogenous or their social welfare democracy is fraying as they become less homogenous. We are not those countries.
We do need legit work programs but it’s fantasy that the post war middle class who became poor recently will go work on farms or any low paying job for their “dignity” then roll over and accept the this as the new normal. But even if they did then we’d have to close the southern border. Which Stein would NEVER do…since it’s not “nice”. The jobs created would all be FAR FAR less lucrative than the jobs that vanished. Sure it’d be lovely if we all lived more simply and may be forced to in short order. Meanwhile I doubt that people who once made 60,000 a year would roll into minimum wage CCC jobs with a smile. Given the world we live in now, yes, handing out small checks and hoping for the best might just be cheaper. I never said this was a “solution” however. I bet the woman you mentioned could get a job as a Walmart greater. Fine. It’s a job. The point is that level wage is the only kind that could possibly be created in enough abundance to approach full employment. Except than even Walmart needs people to have some money to spend and since no one would…And then we’d be Malaysia – but with our dignity I suppose. I doubt very much that this nation will take kindly to that outcome. Christ, the Chicago teachers won’t even accept a small increase in wages as acceptable.
The only way to do what Stein thinks should be done is to raise taxes to the moon and/or print money – which makes money worthless, or rather more worthless. Or hock the last of the nation to China and hope they keep buying our increasingly crap bonds. Or make unilateral decisions about who can make how much which might work if the wisest people on earth are making those decisions…forever. And everyone with ambition signs on to this world that has never existed.
I agree that the borders must be closed. If the Greens really want that many Mexicans to become new US citizens, then we should just annex Mexico and get it done in one fell swoop.
“Given the world we live in now, yes, handing out small checks and hoping for the best might just be cheaper. I never said this was a “solution” however. ”
That’s not cheaper: that’s a waste of money.
All I hear is lots of excuse-making for why we can’t solve this grave problem of 20% (real) unemployment & underemployment. That still leaves millions of people suffering & cast aside, people who did nothing wrong to deserve it. Social darwinism, in other words.
We have the resources to implement a WPA program, not just as a society, but the fedl govt. End the useless war in Afghanistan today. Reduce our 1948-level presence in Germany and Korea and around the world — today. Moving down the budget, kill pork barrel projects, stop funding NPR. And, yes, print money, which is in essence extending ourselves a loan. (It’d help with the trade imbalance as a side benefit.) Big corporations are sitting on $3 trillion in cash. Bill Clinton believes we need to figure out how to free that up and get it back into circulation. That’s one of the few things I still agree with Bill on.
Further:
* Fold capital gains into the “earned” income tax structure;
* Restore the 70% top tax bracket;
* Establish a minimum living wage, with automatic increases for inflation;
* Levy a tax on every derivative, etc. transaction;
* Raise a tariff on products produced off-shore, equivalent to the cost-savings of using foreign workers;
* Instead of tossing cash at shams likes Solyndra, issue an RFP for solar & wind installations at every fedl building & site in the country, then let the free market scramble to win the bid. Issue a similar RFP to provide the fedl govt with computers made in the USA.
That’s my plan, or parts of it. What’s yours? What’s Paul’s?
And, yes, for many, the days of $60,000+ earnings may be over. We fucked up royally, as a nation, as an economy, and as a society, and now there must be some belt-tightening. But which is preferable: that 30 people must settle for $33,000 living wages; or that 29 must settle for permanent unemployment, so that one can get $1,000,000?
and the commonwealth you talked about can only exist if 10% of the population has the rights and everyone else accepts their place. as lovely as Mass. may have been in 1776 we could not tolerate it in 2012. Another solution for collectivism is, of course, mass murder and gulags. Beware though, the intellectuals and arty types are always killed first.
“Beware though, the intellectuals and arty types are always killed first.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. Starbucks stock would drop like a stone, though.
Also: President Dipshit came too about the Constitution:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/12/obama-caves-to-romney-embraces-free-speech-for-critics-of-islam/
I thought the show was better than anything else on radio. Difficult to listen to, sure, but easy isn’t the same as better. I love Tam’s pure passion and that he has core values that are clear and consistent, and that he’s so smart. I wish I could take you out for drinks and spend all night agreeing and arguing; don’t drink before a show, though.
One reason the show was so good is the real heart of the problem was raised, if inadvertently. Paul’s right about where we are and where we’re headed, Tam’s right about a prosperous society being defined by how it treats its vulnerable citizens.
I could write pages on this but, since I already have, I’ll spare everyone wear and tear on their scroll fingers. Fantastic topic, though, great fodder for discussion. Valuable contribution from Paul, and big kudos to Tam for pointing to, and still having the heart to be outraged about, the shameful piece of this puzzle.
“I wish I could take you out for drinks and spend all night agreeing and arguing; don’t drink before a show, though.”
John’s dry, and I call in right after feeding the horses. I’d welcome an off-air discussion over drinks, though. To steal a boast about one notorious wag/lush, ‘He makes more sense drunk than most people do sober.’
“a prosperous society being defined by how it treats its vulnerable citizens.”
We must accept that we’re not nearly as prosperous as we used to be, or even as we like to imagine, and question whether that justifies mistreating our vulnerable fellow citizens.
Sounds like I have to give it a listen. Just from what I have read in the comments though- I can tell you a 52 year old woman already possessing a degree will probably not be eligible for any kind of retraining program. If there are programs out there I would love to know about them. I am fighting that battle for employment right now. Been sending out resumes since last December and have had exactly three interviews. I have inquired all over about retraining- and the resources do not exist for someone already in possession of a simple Bachelor’s. My understanding is that monies for education and retraining are going to those who were displaced (laid off from manufacturing for example) or lacking any degree at all.
As for a job at Wal-Mart as a greeter? Even they don’t want someone like me. Too much experience and education- might question the status quo or rile up the serfs.
I have a favorite grocery store cashier, she is friendly, smiley, and efficient. She is also a former high school teacher.
And she makes bubkus.
I’ve always said, and it’s been true in my life, that I’ll always get by no matter what happens. I could, I believe, get a job at the local supermarket if necessary. But don’t let’s kid ourselves, working for a much lower paycheck than one has been used to is demoralizing and, practically speaking, a problem. When it becomes widespread then it’s a widespread problem. Most of us live at the edge of our means, and diminishing those means is not without consequence.
I’m glad your grocery store clerk is friendly, smiley and efficient; I like to think I’ll be that way if I have to do that, but as James Baldwin so eloquently pointed out in the classic “Baldwin’s Nigger,” just because people are friendly, smiley and efficient doesn’t mean they’re happy, content, glad to be doing what they’re doing, or even okay – they can be quietly dying inside. And a nation of people who used to be middle class and are now quietly dying inside is a fetid place.
Tam made an excellent point last night, I thought he was amazing in making it and he’s right. I think he misread, a bit, what Paul said – Paul seemed to me to be merely stating the situation as he sees it, not suggesting people should be discarded and left behind – but Tam didn’t misread what’s happening in America and it deserves the outrage Tam gave it.
My comment is awaiting moderation because I referred to this movie. I hope this posts. There is wisdom in this that is just as relevant to today’s times.
” Paul seemed to me to be merely stating the situation as he sees it, not suggesting people should be discarded and left behind”
I find no comfort in the distinction between ‘should be discarded’ and
‘regrettably must be discarded.’
“I have a favorite grocery store cashier… She is … a former high school teacher.”
A civilization that’s converting its teachers into grocery clerks, is a civilization on the way out.
I’m not trying to offer you comfort, there’s no comfort to be had in the scenario that’s been unfolding for years and is only now getting attention.
Also I’m not here to defend Paul. The reason I’m drawing this distinction is because Paul’s point is one I’ve been making for several years now. And in doing so I’ve been attacked by everyone from Wall Street bankers to private equity partners to middle class conformists to welfare recipients, calling me everything from cynical and debbie downer to arrogant and condescending, and also Bush hater and Obama hater and ratfucker and Obot and troll. And all I’ve been doing, and all I heard Paul doing, was saying “this is what I see” to people who don’t want to hear it and think that whatever category they’ve put me in makes me the bad guy.
Well I’ll tell you something, Tam. I’m just like you except I saw this coming, figured out how to position myself as best I could, made the sacrifices and compromises and did the work. Yes I know, you think you did that too. Well you didn’t; if you had then you’d be better positioned right now.
In the early 90s I saw this coming. After a decade of AIDS, dozens of friends in need and then dying, to say nothing of the political and scientific and services fundraising I was involved with, I was flat broke despite having been professionally successful, and deeply depressed. Again. I’d sold my house and furnishings and art and car, was living in a tiny one bedroom sublet in the West Village eking out the meagerest of livings doing things like signing in actors for off-Broadway open calls or greeting patrons at gallery exhibits. I was depressed and poor and humbled to say the least. With AIDS mostly behind me I started noticing other things in the papers and conversations I’d been distracted from for years, and where we are now is exactly what I saw coming. And that scared me. I got even more depressed, got stoned and lay fetal on the sofa watching Robin Byrd at 2am. Then I got to work. I figured out where to go and what to do to make money and then I did it. It was legit and I did nothing I will ever be ashamed of; in fact I fought (and mostly lost) some damn good battles. I made money, I made a lot of it, I got us a big apartment and bought us a house with beautiful property and renovated and outfitted it, I helped out others who’d been struggling, I put some money away. If you didn’t do that, if a lot of Americans took out too much equity on their houses, if people had big weddings and took extravagant vacations they couldn’t afford, if people simply didn’t put away nuts for winter, that’s not my fault and not Paul’s fault. With different, more conventional, choices I could easily have been that 56 year old WalMart greeter and maybe that’s one reason I’m sympathetic to them, but my not being one of them does not make me the bad guy just because I saw winter coming and collected and stored nuts.
I’m making the distinction between what you heard Paul say and the way I heard it because people who have money and see that a lot of people are going to be left behind are not necessarily the ones responsible for it.
Zal, I’d never have pegged you as a Byrdwatcher. The layers never cease!
Zal, I’m just a few steps from complete self-sufficiency as a mountain man. If things really hit the fan, I’m actually set up better than you.
It’s unfair to stereotype people who are struggling now as all profligates who threw outrageous parties and paid heavenly bills. Many people never made the kind of money you did, so setting themselves up as you did (two DINCs, I presume) was never an option. Nor can the half of college graduates unable to find work be blamed for frittering away their earnings.
I’m glad you’re nearly self sufficient. I’m not competitive about it, only glad I made the choices I have the past 20 years; glad for you that you have too. A lot of people I’ve met in recent years –and many more I haven’t– in Connecticut and NY’s Hudson Valley are living lives that, if necessary, could be self sufficient as well. No doubt there are a lot of us across the country.
It’s not only about money, Jay, nor only about extreme excesses. It’s about choices people make every hour of every day, rich and poor and in between. We’ve been headed down this road a long time and there’ve been lots of warning signs. But most people just kept on indulging in what’s easy and self-indulgent despite evidence of corruption on many levels. You may not be able to appreciate how much, and how viciously, I and others like me have been attacked the past 20 years, more even than 20, for warning about what’s coming. The way Mouse and Lola and their minions have gone after me here is a small hint of what it’s like. Increasingly, the past several years, standing apart from the crowd and telling the truth in America became a sin worthy of metaphorical stoning.
I’ll give a little more history for context. The first thing that caught my eye in the early 90s, and fed my epiphany, was Monsanto’s acquisition of Searle in the mid-80s (I’d been keeping abreast of pharmaceutical happenings because of AIDS all through the 80s, and when my attention drifted off AIDS, this popped up). Searle was a corporation that dealt with pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and animal health. What, I wondered, was Monsanto, the company that’d been the major manufacturer of DDT and Agent Orange, doing getting into the pharmaceutical, agriculture, and animal health business? This led me to look deeper into the pharmaceutical industry, the agriculture and animal health industries. And what I found, with corporate interests increasingly in cahoots with government, was grotesque enough to be science fiction. Except it was fact. I wrote about it. Others were writing about it. We got attacked, denigrated, dismissed. I kept writing about it. I decided I needed to make money, I went to work for Goldman Sachs, thinking well this is just money it can’t be hurting anybody like those other industries do. Eventually I was working 14 hour days at Goldman and stopped writing about the Monsantos and Pfizers, and then my friends who were fighting that fight were mad at me. Over time I saw what was happening at GS and the rest of investment banking and buyout firms, the lying and cheating and really revolting greed, fought my battles on that front (nobody listened, nobody cared), then resigned and moved back into writing.
A lot of us have been warning about what’s happening for many years. It didn’t matter. Being informed and telling the truth is no match for devious manipulative pile-on opposition. But that doesn’t mean the information hasn’t been readily available and there hasn’t been a consistent drum beat of warning. And yet most Americans just carried on taking their toxic pills, eating their toxic food, maintaining landscaping with toxic chemicals, driving their toxic SUVs, voting in toxic representatives, over using toxic credit, supporting and defending this whole toxic system while belittling or ignoring those warning what the consequences will be. Well here we are and yes it’s been enough years, enough indulgence big and small, enough shunning of truth and reason, that those who’ve been assisting, encouraging, cooperating with all this toxicity are the problem as much as those who invented it.
Yes, they’re responsible for this too. They participated. We wouldn’t be where we are if it were only bad elected representatives and CEOs, that few people couldn’t have pulled this off.. In a society as large as ours, millions and millions and millions of people had to contribute to create this mess we’re in.
Zal – you directed you last comment to me but cited a comment by Tamerlane. FYI.
I should have followed the sage advice I heard once somewhere: “Plastics.”
Sorry. You must’ve been on my mind for some reason. I sometimes post while I’m on the phone or doing something else, which I shouldn’t do because I’m the world’s worst multi tasker. I knew who I was posting to; you and Tam are, to me, distinctly different men.
If we really want to help people who are hurting, we need to cut government spending. Everybody is talking about raising taxes on the “wealthy” but all that does is allow our government to built more fancy homeland security facilities complete with gyms and swimming pools, and of course, launch more wars. What people really need is the freedom and opportunity to prosper. Raising taxes, printing more money, increasing regulations, makes things worse. The value of our dollar declines, the cost of living increases, and jobs in this country become scarce.
If anybody around here is truly a bleeding heart, then we need to vote for change ASAP because we’re on a collision course with hard times. Poor and working class people don’t need to be rescued by the government, we aren’t stupid or helpless or in need of pity, we are trapped in a system that is denying people dignity and opportunity.
Cutting govt spending is what puts those teachers out of work.
The government doesn’t spend money on teachers, it spends money on administration, parking lot paving, and over priced curriculums written by political cronies.
It’s naive to believe that if we just give the Gov more money they’ll spend it on teachers.
Actually, that’s not true.
http://www.aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Policy_and_Advocacy/files/SchoolBudgetBriefFINAL.pdf
some comments are going to moderation on this one. no idea why. I’ll keep checking and releasing them.
As to my cashier friend, I was expressing irony and admiring her spirit, not meaning to imply she was in the best of all worlds.
That scene is repeated everywhere in our country. Talk to the people you interact with, they have amazing stories.
I don’t know about now but in a more rural county of Maryland 15 years ago, all the Acme grocery store cashiers were unionized and made above $20/hr plus benefits/healthcare/retirement. I’d agree that probably the local convenience store clerk doesn’t make much but I’m pretty sure the unions have taken care of the folks who work in chain grocery stores.
I think they’re unionized in Cal. too. But not in Fl.or rural areas of NY.
Average hourly wage for Safeway employees is $12.
I make about $4.95 an hr TL, I guess I should go check out safeway.
When I was a kid I was a cashier at a supermarket, and then later worked in the meatcutting area. I was in a union both times, the UFCW.. to get to the point where you are making $20 an hour as a cashier means that person probably had to have that job for at least 10 or 15 years… there are incremental wage increases per year but they aren’t aggregious.
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed recently, but I would say the majority of supermarkets now have “self checkout” lanes.. these are designed to reduce OOP labor costs for the supermarket. The 24/7 supermarket I used to work at during college is with a full staff of cashiers now has two full time cashiers (both 17 years old, so making the bare minumum union wage) and one cashier supervising 8 self checkout lanes…that cashier has about 20 years in the store and is probably making $20 an hour, but the store has cut labor by at least 75% and replaced it with automated cashiers.
I don’t know how many stores are mandatory UFCW members, I’m pretty sure Walmart is not, but the big conglomerates (Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co and the like, normally are).
Just to clarify again, I’d guess that a cashier starts at a wage of probably 8 dollars an hour and probably makes at best a 5% wage increase per year and it’s usually locked in when the union negotiates their contract.
So to go from 8 dollars an hour to sixteen dollars an hour working as a cashier would take 12-16 years of constant employment give or take. I worked in a supermarket for 6 years and the most I made was 10 dollars an hour, and that was working on Sunday when I was getting paid time and a half.
It’s by no means a cushy union job.
Note that I prefaced my comment with “I don’t know about now” – I do know that 15 years ago in rural Maryland unionized Acme (that’s originally American Stores, then Albertson’s chain might be something else now) cashiers made $20/hr. It was a big deal in our town because the cashiers threatened to strike and Acme was the major grocery store.